


This Is Your Moment (And The Next, And The Next)

by Chill_with_Penguins



Category: Galavant (TV)
Genre: Chef is fed up with everyone, F/M, Galavant is kind of an idiot, Galavant's dad is kind of an idiot too, Isabella knows all, Minor cursing, Misunderstandings, Non-graphic mention of reproductive organs, and their repercussions, but he didn't mean to be, is there a tag for that, serious story but told in an unserious way, vaguely fluff?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-27
Updated: 2019-05-27
Packaged: 2020-03-20 13:51:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18993913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chill_with_Penguins/pseuds/Chill_with_Penguins
Summary: "I thought it was my moment," Galavant sighs heavily, "but I think I was wrong. Night."He rolls over and starts snoring. Isabella stares at him incredulously, and across the fire pit, Sid pauses his woodcarving long enough to shrug. "It's a Moment thing. You can never tell with those."~~~Galavant has spent his whole life waiting for one moment. It takes him longer than it should to realize that's not actually how it works.(Or: the author was listening to the Galavant soundtrack again and heard the "your moment in the sun" song and suddenly needed to spend an hour and a half writing and one-shot about the idiocy of living your whole life as if there's a single moment that defines you, rather than a series of increasingly baffling errors and coincidences that culminate into something more.)





	This Is Your Moment (And The Next, And The Next)

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! In case you missed the tag, there's some very minor swearing in this, and I do use the word "vagina" once. So. If that's a thing you're scared of/bothered by (?), fair warning. To everyone else, please enjoy! This is just one of my rants covered in crack and fluff, but I hope you like it. Please comment either way, I love reading them and you guys always make my day <3

When Gal is ten, he spends a week sleeping on the hay in the training stables, trying to "bond" with his future noble steed. The horse, a young black colt named Coco, is less than impressed. His father finds out when Gal comes to sword practice limping and unable to lift his arms all the way; he'd been trampled the night before and the doctor only spends five minutes in their house before announcing that his ribs are broken. 

 

Later, when his dad is ranting about the "heights of stupidity" while Gal listens from halfway up the stairs with his vision blurring (from  _pain,_ he's not crying, he's  _not_ , knights don't cry--) he mumbles to himself in the darkness. His father never hears, but he says it all the same; a plea and justification to the darkness settled on the stairwell and the stars he can't see above. 

 

"I needed to. It's the only way to get to my Moment."

 

*

 

It takes two weeks for Sid to bring it up. Gal is just past shock and into anger, training from before the sun comes up until long after the sun goes down each day. He's getting ready to mount another invasion of the castle--to save Madalena or kill her, he hasn't quite decided. Sid is taking forever to sharpen his sword, and he's started ranting quietly to keep himself angry and therefore effective while doing aggressive push-ups by the time the boy gets back. 

 

"What did you mean, when you said this might be your moment after all?" Sid asks that night after dinner. He's staring at his plate, scraping a small pile of boiled potatoes in circles. Gal is pretty sure he's heard the kid crying from homesickness at night, but the idea of approaching that is more daunting than any of the dragon-based quests he's done, so he's leaving it be for a little while in the hopes it'll get better on its own. 

 

"You know, your Moment. The most important Moment of your life."

 

"You mean like marriage?"

 

"No," Gal sighs, getting up to put his dish in the sink. "Marriage is all well and good, I suppose, but a man's Moment is when he proves once and for all that he's a man."

 

"Could you be more specific?" Sid asked, looking up with uncertainty splashed across his face. God, this is exactly why Gal doesn't take squires. 

 

"A man waits all his life for one Moment to arrive, when he steps into the light and fulfills his destiny. It's his purpose, his reason for living, his one and only chance to prove that he's worth something to the world."

 

Sid, a few weeks into his apprenticeship and just beginning to realize that the great Galavant is a complete idiot most of the time, looks skeptical. "Are you sure? My parents told me that your life is made up of millions of moments, and you have to make the best out of each and every one, or else you're just waiting around for something that will never happen."

 

"Sid," Gal huffs, "between me and your parents, who's the famous and successful knight?"

 

"You are," Sid admits. "But--"

 

"Yes, I am. Now do these dishes, it's important... conditioning. You can't swing a sword till you know how to scrub properly," Gal says, already halfway into bed.

 

Later, when Sid's fingers are pruning and he's sure Galavant is asleep, he glances over at the sleeping knight and scowls slightly. "I still think my parents are right."

 

*

 

Once, when they're ambushed by a gang of merchants-turned-robbers, Galavant leaps into action, moving at least three times as gracefully as he has in the past few weeks. He pulls out an extra sword--Isabella's not quite sure she wants to know where that came from--halfway through a lunge and fights so fiercely that one of the archers providing backup pisses himself. 

 

At camp that night, she waits for the onslaught of bragging, but it never comes. He just sits, staring morosely into the fire pit until finally, Isabella gives up and walks over to settle the curiosity itching at her skin. 

 

"Those were some pretty fancy moves you were pulling, today." Pause. Cue egotistical self-praise. Except it doesn't come, so she just keeps going, hoping he'll answer her question. "Why didn't you fight like that last week, with those hags? Or when the Hobgoblin-Human Union Alliance cornered us?"

 

"I thought it was my moment," Galavant sighs heavily, "but I think I was wrong. Night."

 

He rolls over and starts snoring. Isabella stares at him incredulously, and across the fire pit, Sid pauses his woodcarving long enough to shrug. "It's a Moment thing. You can never tell with those."

 

*

 

And then, in (and under and just outside) the castle, Gal is singing his heart out, talking about moments, looking up as if the whole sky is smiling down on him. Isabella and Sid exchange commiserating looks while her parents stare at ~~her boyfriend? her rescuer? her rescue-ee?~~ Galavant. 

 

"Are you sure he's sane?" her mother asks her, leaning over to whisper it as Gal hits a lingering high note. 

 

"Not in the slightest," Isabella says wryly. "Are you sure Dad is?"

 

*

 

After the Battle of the Three Armies and before their wedding, Gal pulls Isabella aside and tells her, beaming, that he's had his Moment. That the battle was it, had to be it, because what could possibly be more epic-worthy than what they'd just lived through?

 

Isabella kisses his cheek fondly and shakes her head. She's tried to explain it; he won't listen till he's ready and she's prepared to wait for him to get there. "You still don't see the big picture, do you?"

 

"What are you talking about?" he asks. He looks so honestly confused that for a moment, she's a little overwhelmed. Here's this sometimes-valiant knight with big ideas and a big ego and a bigger heart, and his face looks just like it did when they ran across those puppies with little sweaters on them, and this is a man she's about to marry. She's getting  _married_  to him and the thought makes her heart hurt in all the right ways. 

 

"You'll figure it out," she says, and darts out of the room. She can hear him complaining from across the courtyard, but right now she has a dress to put on and some ass to kick.

 

* 

 

When he visits his Dad again, later, he tells him all about the Battle of the Three Armies and the great feats he accomplished. He tells him about his Moment, and, beaming with pride, waits for the appropriate awe and applause. 

 

Instead, his father wilts like Sid's garden patch lettuce. 

 

"Oh, dear," Galavant the elder says, the lines in his face telling more stories than all the lines they ever wrote about him on a page. "I think I've bungled it all up for you."

 

*

 

A week after Gal and Isabella have their fourth and final kid--

 

("We bartered for five!"

"Yeah, but that was  _before_  I pushed four humans out of my vagina! If you want a fifth you can _carry it yourself_!")

 

\--Gal wanders in from putting Richard ("He can never know we named one of our kids after him," Gal had said with unusual seriousness, "as far as he's aware I have a great-uncle Richard who saved my life when I was eight.") down with warm goat milk splashed all across the front of his tunic. He looks lost in the way she's come to realize usually mean he's thinking about something harder than usual, and it only takes him a moment to get the words out once he's sitting. 

 

"Do you think," he begins, his eyes still somewhere on the invisible horizon, "I mean. Is it possible to have more than one Moment? Because the Battle of the Three Armies, that had to be it, right? Except we have kids and every time there's a new one I think  _this is it, this is the most incredible thing that's ever going to happen to me_. So do you think... maybe... I got more than one?"

 

Isabella smiles in the dark room. It's taken him long enough; at this point if she keeps letting him work through it on his own he'll get there faster than if she tries to help him along. 

 

"Yeah, Gal," she says instead. "I think it's possible. Now come to bed, it's late enough as it is already."

 

He comes.

 

*

 

"I think," Galavant announces, stopping halfway through a carrot and dropping the knife, "I may have been wrong about something."

 

"That's not exactly a surprise," Chef manages once he's caught both the knife and his breath. "You're wrong pretty often."

 

"I'm going to pretend I didn't hear that," Galavant says, starting to head for the door. "Thanks for everything!"

 

"You didn't finish your cooking lesson!" Chef shouts after him. He waits for a moment and deflates when it's clear the other man isn't coming back, turning to the unfinished prep work littering his counter in uneven chunks. 

 

"She tells you you aren't bringing in enough income so you step up, and then they tell you it's rude to charge a friend so you back down, and  _then_ the friend just bails halfway through; honestly, this is why I never do anything anymore, what's the point..."

 

*

 

When Danielle is seven, Gal finds her spinning on the beach, trying to do little uneven lunges and jabs with a piece of driftwood in her hand. He catches her before she can poke her own eye out and sits down beside her, grimacing as his knees creak. 

 

"What're you doing, my little warrior?" he asks, a little in awe of how much love and pride he feels at this exact moment. 

 

"Trainin'," she says, her syllables a little awkward around the tooth the dog knocked out yesterday. 

 

"Oh? And who's teaching you?"

 

Danielle crosses her arms over her chest and sticks her chin in the air. It's a pose Gal is all too used to from the women in his life. 

 

"No one, righ' now, but one day Momma's gonna train me! She'll teach me everythin' she knows and I'll be the greatest fighter who ever lived! One day I'll go out and travel the world and prove that I'm the  _best_."

 

By the end of her little solo, she's back to the twirling. Gal catches her before she falls and feels lifetimes older than he is. 

 

"I tell you a secret," he says, meeting her beautiful dark brown eyes. "Proving you're the best is going take a whole lot more than one day."


End file.
